NASA is auctioning up licenses to some of their more than 6,000 patents. The …

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Psst. If you’re thinking of getting into the intelligent smoke-detector business or building a swarm of nano-bots, NASA has a few patents for you.

In fact, you might even get them at a bargain price. They’re up for auction Thursday in Los Angeles, at an event run by the patent-selling company ICAP Patent Brokerage. NASA is listing them as part of a pilot program that has been running for the past four years, trying to make its space-aged technology available to the public.

Who wouldn’t want a crack at the NASA patent, “Swarm Autonomic Agents with Self-Destruct Capability?”

That’s included in one of the three patent lots that will be auctioned Tuesday. Two of the lots cover autonomic computing, including techniques that help large numbers of tiny devices—NASA calls them “autonomous nanotechnology swarms”—figure out whether or not they’re working properly, share information, and even self destruct for “self protection of the entire system,” according to NASA.

Another of the autonomic patents describes a way of reporting a broken smoke detector, a technique that appears to be much more carefully thought-out than the industry-standard 2 am beeping noise.

“These are interesting: they are generally about the way these independent networked devices interact with one another,” says Brian Way, Director of Intellectual Property Law at chip-maker Altera.

All told, there are 12 NASA patents up for auction in the three lots. The third group of patents is less sexy, covering software development techniques. All of the patents were developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Unlike others at the ICAP auction, NASA isn’t selling its patents outright. Instead, it’s offering exclusive licenses. Three years ago, a company called DynaDX bought licenses to 10 NASA patents covering a complicated set of algorithms for analyzing signals. It’s now using them to build brain-pressure-measuring devices that can help diagnose whether someone has had a stroke and monitor treatment in dementia patients.

The patent auctions are an experiment in making NASA’s work useful to a wider audience, says Daniel Lockney, a Technology Transfer Program Executive with NASA. “We’re not making a lot off of this. It’s one of the agency’s goals to transfer as much of this technology to the public as possible.”

Lockney couldn’t say how much the patents are expected to fetch if they sell Thursday.

NASA researchers have filed more than 6,000 patents over the years. Most of them have expired by now, but the agency still has about 1,250 it can license out, he says.

And starting this summer, it will be looking for new ways to do this, beyond the ICAP auction. Lockney says that NASA will put out a request for proposals, asking for some new patent ideas. “We’re asking for no-cost-to-the-government contracts for IP brokerage services and then the brokers who would come in would determine a way to monetize their contribution,” he says.

It's possible I'm not seeing the big picture, but something about NASA selling to the public patents it developed while being funded by the public rubs me a little bit wrong. Maybe the ongoing farce of software patents has made me gun shy about this sort of thing, but taking a resource developed with public funding and making it the exclusive purview of a private company is vaguely annoying to me.

That said, I can't honestly complain about NASA finding other means to get some funding; Congress certainly isn't providing it. And maybe this is the only way to see anything done with the patents at all. If the alternative is they just lay fallow, I suppose this is better.

I just can't help but imagine the scenario of some company buying the license, developing the technology, then selling it back to the government at a massive profit margin.

We’re not making a lot off of this. It’s one of the agency’s goals to transfer as much of this technology to the public as possible.

What the hell? Then why don't they just toss them into the public domain, particularly as they were developed with public money? At least when it comes to copyright, I thought government works in general were public domain by default, why would it be different for patents? That seems like the fastest way to transfer technology to the public.

I can think of two reasons NASA might have to patent its developments. 1) Reduce costs to the taxpayers of funding NASA. If the patents are licensed, the money is probably funneled into NASA's coffers to shore up funding that gets cut or help support projects that run over-budget. 2) Protection for NASA by establishing prior art. If they patent it first, nobody can sue them over it.

1) Reduce costs to the taxpayers of funding NASA. If the patents are licensed, the money is probably funneled into NASA's coffers to shore up funding that gets cut or help support projects that run over-budget.

While I will (with great regret) admit that NASA might find this sort of thing necessary given our immensely short sighted and stupid legislature, it's still an irritating and inefficient workaround for not getting sufficient funding in the first place, and raises a host of interest concerns amongst others.

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2) Protection for NASA by establishing prior art. If they patent it first, nobody can sue them over it.

Now this is fair, but only from the patent side, not from the licensing side. Getting a patent on it (not a big deal, and has happened for ages) is not a problem, it's not releasing it into the public domain afterwards. It's not necessary to auction it to private interests to get prior art protection, getting the patent in the first place is sufficient.

If the U.S. government wanted to enforce restrictions on the use of government-sponsored technology, then Congress would pass a law to that effect, such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which heavily restrict the transfer of aerospace technologies.

If the U.S. government wanted to prevent competition between NASA and private aerospace companies, then Congress would pass a law to that effect, such as the Space Act, which bars NASA from competing with the private sector.

So count me among those who don't understand why NASA should need or want patents.

I thought all NASA patients were property of the U.S. Government and, as such, available for all to use royalty-free. Did Congress change this, and if so when? What other government assets are they selling off behind our backs?

There's been lots of news stories about people getting calls from the FBI when they try to sell NASA memorabilia, yet I see Jeff Bezos is about to pull the Apollo 11 Saturn V first stage out of the ocean for his personal gain. Is Mr. Bezos paying anything to NASA? Yeah, I thought not. But if you or I tried to pull some rocket parts off the ocean floor, we'd end up in jail for theft of government property.

Auctioning these patents is a horrible idea. They should be public domain.

Hey, someone who thinks the way I do!

I think the problem is that people keep complaining that all NASA does is lose money. They post on stories like this online all the time with their GPS enabled cellphones while driving their windtunnel tested cars.

I call bullshit. If NASA really wanted to make their technology available to the public, they'd take all their patents and put them into the public domain (or however one goes about making a patent no longer a patent).

We’re not making a lot off of this. It’s one of the agency’s goals to transfer as much of this technology to the public as possible.

What the hell? Then why don't they just toss them into the public domain, particularly as they were developed with public money? At least when it comes to copyright, I thought government works in general were public domain by default, why would it be different for patents? That seems like the fastest way to transfer technology to the public.

I agree it seems like a terrible idea.

The only possible justification I can think of is that this technology would (perhaps initially) be only marginally economical - so that a commercial case to develop could only be made with the backing of a monopoly.

You do not need your own patent for prior art protection. Just document everything, let lawyers have important stuff timestamped with legal timestamping services, and you're 99% good to go. If hit by a patent, claim it was obvious already before it was filed.

They're probably right about these patents not making NASA much money; after all of the costs of hiring patent lawyers to apply for the patent, hiring companies to look for interested buyers, then selling them at auction where a commission will be taken out, my guess is that NASA has just about broke even. Unfortunately, I think the purpose of these patents is in large part political--successful patents are "proof" to legislatures and the public that NASA has been "inventing stuff." Much as they are used in industry R&D, patents make applied research and development more traceable to the higher ups.

Patents licensing can also be limited to US companies--there's an ongoing debate about whether NASA should be making technological developments open to everyone or just to US industry, even outside of things which are obviously governed under ITAR. I find it increasingly silly as even aerospace companies are becoming more globalized and knowing who counts as "US" is becoming more difficult, but I understand the fear that US taxpayer dollar are being used to develop dual-use technologies which might benefit hostile governments. The sad truth though is that NASA aerospace research funding has been dwindling, and it's more often the US who is looking overseas for fundamental research findings than the other way around.